Like most Individuals, together with White Home reporters apparently, I’ve tuned out Donald Trump’s incessant Large Lie that he gained the 2020 presidential election — “by lots.” Which means his nonsense about rigged voting and Democrats’ dishonest goes largely unchallenged, and he continues to undermine religion in U.S. elections. In spite of everything, it’s not like anybody can shut him up.
Nonetheless, it’s time to stop tuning out. Whether or not a reporter on the beat or a citizen in dialog anyplace, concentrate and push again in opposition to Trump’s un-American blather. As a result of in current days the power-drunk president has in varied methods telegraphed that his Large Lie isn’t nearly a previous election however a pretext for what he might do to disrupt the following one, the 2026 midterm elections for Congress.
Different 2020 election liars are paying an enormous worth, actually. Simply this week, right-wing Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Programs, on high of $40 million in March to Smartmatic, to settle defamation lawsuits primarily based on Newsmax’s false reporting (echoing Trump) that the businesses rigged voting machines for Joe Biden. Newsmax’s penalty is in fact dwarfed by the $787 million that Fox Information paid to Dominion in 2023; in a pending trial, Smartmatic seeks $2.7 billion from Fox.
All of the whereas, the president of the USA continues to spout the identical slop, all however proof against authorized motion, as he units the stage for 2026.
On Friday, after Trump’s bro-fest summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin concerning the struggle in Ukraine, Trump fortunately recounted to Fox’s Sean Hannity in Alaska that the 2 presidents digressed to debate the 2020 U.S. election and — what have you learnt? — Putin, the KGB-trained grasp manipulator and well-known arbiter of sincere elections (not) supposedly assured Trump that, sure, he truly gained massive however the election was rigged in opposition to him.
As an apart right here, recall that Hannity and different Fox community stars privately trashed Trump’s 2020 election lie, in line with filings within the Dominion lawsuit, and that Hannity testified below oath: “I didn’t consider it for one second.” But in Anchorage, Hannity nodded alongside as Trump advised him that Putin mentioned Trump gained in 2020 “by a lot,“ however “your election was rigged as a result of you’ve got mail-in voting. … It’s unimaginable to have mail-in voting and have sincere elections.”
Assuming Putin mentioned what Trump claims, the Russian was enjoying to Trump’s longstanding, groundless gripes not solely in opposition to the 2020 election however in opposition to voting by mail, which Democratic voters use rather more than Republicans do. And Trump, ever the Kremlin’s helpful fool, took his cue: Very first thing on Monday morning, he declared in an extended, error-filled and much-capitalized social media diatribe that he’d “lead a motion” to ban mail ballots and voting machines.
Trump repeated Putin’s falsehood that the USA is “the one Nation within the World that makes use of Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up due to the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” However in actual fact, dozens of nations use mail ballots and, as with different types of voting, analysis, together with the courts, has discovered that fraud is vanishingly uncommon.
The president’s stance on mail ballots is like his place on a ceasefire in Ukraine: He was for it earlier than he was in opposition to it (and he was for each issues earlier than getting ensnared in Putin’s internet on Friday). In 2024, bending to Republican officers’ pleadings that he drop his opposition to mail ballots, Trump urged supporters to vote by mail — as he sometimes, and hypocritically, does — and even recorded a video promotion.
Now that Trump is again to opposing mail ballots, in Monday morning’s social media rant he but once more contradicted the plain phrases of the Structure to say powers he doesn’t have, that he can order states to eliminate mail ballots and voting machines. “Keep in mind, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Authorities in counting and tabulating the votes,” he wrote. “They have to do what the Federal Authorities, as represented by the President of the USA, tells them.”
Right here’s the Structure on that: “The Occasions, Locations and Method of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in every State by the Legislature thereof.”
It’s simply extra proof that each occasions Trump took the oath of workplace to uphold the Structure and “see that the legal guidelines are faithfully executed,” he lied then, too.
The president has since repeated that he, with Republican allies, will “do every little thing potential” to finish mail ballots. And he’s saying the quiet half out loud: With out mail-in voting, he advised reporters within the Oval Workplace on Monday, “you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s greater than something having to do with redistricting.”
There you’ve got it. Trump’s “motion” in opposition to mail ballots, alongside together with his push for pink states to redraw congressional district traces to elect extra Republicans, is all a part of how he’s making an attempt rig elections in 2026, in what is anticipated to be a foul 12 months for his social gathering given his unpopularity. And it’s all predicated on the Large Lie about nonexistent Democratic election dishonest.
There are different warning indicators: Trump’s navy takeover of the District of Columbia. (Day-after-day brings one other announcement of a Republican governor sending Nationwide Guard troops.) His occupation of Los Angeles. Repeated threats to ship troops to different massive, blue cities. All on specious grounds and over the objections of elected native and state leaders.
It’s wholly possible, then, that on trumped-up claims (pun completely meant) about potential election fraud, Trump would militarize Democratic vote-heavy cities in time for subsequent 12 months’s elections. At a minimal, that will certainly intimidate some would-be voters. At worst, properly, I don’t even wish to speculate concerning the worst.
When Trump entered presidential politics a decade in the past, it took some time for journalists to get comfy making use of the L-word: Liar. However he earned it. Now he’s all however inviting us to develop the nomenclature to incorporate autocrat, dictator and even the F-bomb, fascist.
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